The Girl-Who-Became-Harry-Potter
by Esm3rald
Summary: Harriet is an orphan who has lived all her life in the foster system. Her only respite during childhood has been reading the 'HP' books. One day, while reading once again 'The Philosopher's Stone', she's struck by lightning. Instead of dying, she appears inside the cupboard under the stairs looking like a six-year-old and with a familiar lightning bolt shaped scar on her forehead.
1. Prologue

**This is something that I had in mind for a while but only today I decided to write it. I love writing about SI-fiction/OCs, so I decided to try my hand at one with Harry Potter. In this story – like the title suggests – the OC will take Harry Potter's place but she will have all the knowledge of the seven books so she will go out of her way to change things and make her life better compared to Harry's in Canon. For future pairings I'm a little undecided at the moment though my favourites are Tom/Voldemort, Snape, Remus, Sirius, Lucius and sometimes Draco so it will be one of those – though I'm leaning more towards Snape or Voldemort at the moment. Hope you like it, tell me what you think! BTW, I imagine my OC looking like Danielle Campbell, though with emerald green eyes and curvier in the chest department when she grows up.**

 **Prologue**

 _31st July 2016_

Harriet really hated her name. That was why she had started insisting on people calling her Harry. The name Harriet reminded her of posh families with spoiled kids who whined and got everything handed out to them on a silver platter. It simply wasn't her. It was the furthest thing from who she was she could think of.

Because, you see, Harry was an orphan who had skipped from foster family to foster home all sixteen years of her life. Right now were the summer holidays after her last year of high school and she was sitting against a tree at the park near the foster home she had ended up in after the last failed family experience that had lasted three months. She was getting old now and the chance of her finding a family was slimmer that it had ever been. Not that it really mattered. She would start college in the fall and since she had won a scholarship that covered tuition and home fees, she would leave the foster home soon and finally live her life like she wanted it. Finally her efforts had been paid off and she was enjoying the free time she had while it lasted.

Enjoying her free time meant doing the thing she loved the most in all her world. Reading. Maybe it was a lame pursuit but she didn't care. She wasn't exactly a people person; she had always found it difficult to make friends, not because she was shy exactly, it was more the fact that she couldn't relate to most of the people her age. She didn't love partying or drinking, or loud music and staying up all night dancing at a club. She was the quiet type, you could say, the one who simply love to stay in and spend her Saturday night reading or watching television.

Her favourite book, since she was little, or maybe it would be better to say, her favourite saga, was definitely the Harry Potter books (that was another reason why she wanted to be called Harry). And that was what she was doing now, reading a Harry Potter book, specifically 'The Philosopher's Stone'. She had lost count of how many times she had read the books and yet every time, it was like the first time, exciting and mysterious.

She loved everything about it, even the things she didn't agree on or the characters she despised. Because, let's face it, there were so many wrong things with the Wizarding World that it was impossible not to grind your teeth and scream at the pages in front of you. But all faded into the background when you thought about the fact that those characters had magic. And magic was worth everything.

She just knew that Harry Potter himself would never give up magic for anything in the world. His life before finding out he had magic was simply awful, and though it didn't exactly became easier after, it certainly became better. It was like living in a black and white world and then magic comes around and suddenly everything is in colour. She would give everything to be able to wield magic, even face all the things Harry had to face during the seven books. It would all be worth it just to have that letter delivered to her and someone showing up at her door to tell her that she was going to Hogwarts. It would make up for all the times she had wished for some distant relative to take her away from her current life and tell her that she finally had a home. Unfortunately no relative or anyone else really had ever shown up, nor any owl had ever brought her a letter. It was all just wishful thinking. And yet, she couldn't stop dreaming. Sure, her life was – maybe – finally going as she wanted it to but starting living meant giving up her dreams and she wasn't ready for that yet.

Suddenly, from nowhere, a loud thunder sounded and then rain begun to fall heavily over her head. She got up quickly, afraid of getting her book wet but it was too late, in a few seconds her and the book was drenched, her clothes sticking to her skin uncomfortably. She started to run to go back to the foster home to get shelter from the sudden thunderstorm when a bright light enveloped her and a pain like she had never felt before spread all over her body. She screamed for what felt like hours until she felt her eyelids getting heavy and soon after black surrounded her.

The lightning had struck, leaving a brown, burnt imprint on the ground but of Harriet there was no trace left.

She had simply disappeared.


	2. Chapter 1

**Hello everyone, this is the first chapter! I know it's a little short but I think the next ones will be longer. Hope you like it anyway, tell me what you think!**

 **Chapter 1**

 _31st July 2006_

When Harry woke up, it was dark. She was lying on something not exactly soft but not hard ground either.

She figured it was something from a very uncomfortable bed to a cot. Wherever she was, she couldn't see anything at all. She touched around in an effort to understand exactly where she was and found walls on all sides of her. The room she was in was extremely small, barely 6 feet long and 4 feet wide. Even the ceiling above her head was sloped and uncomfortably low. She sat up, being careful not to bash her head against the ceiling and started to move her hand above her head in an effort to find a source of light. Not long after she finally found a light bulb dangling from it and pulled the chain attached to it. In a moment, the space around her was surrounded by a feeble light.

Harry looked around herself wide-eyed when she realized exactly where she was. She was inside a cupboard.

How did she end up inside a cupboard? The last thing she remembered was the fact that she was reading Harry Potter and then that it had started to rain. And then…what?

A second later the vivid memory of pain ran through her mind. She had felt pain, unbearable pain for a moment that seemed to last an eternity and then darkness. But why the pain?

She remembered then, in a moment of perfect clarity, the light so blindingly white that she had closed her eyes, the screams leaving her mouth ringing through her head.

She had been struck by lightning.

Was she dead then? If she was dead then why was she in a cupboard of all places? Was it some kind of hell?

For Harry Potter it certainly was.

She passed her hands over her hair in an effort to calm down and think rationally. She needed to figure out what was going and why she was there. And where 'there' was.

When the palm of her hand passed by chance against her forehead, she felt something that it was not supposed to be there. It was a part of skin that was slightly rougher. She traced it with her middle finger and realized that it was a scar. A scar that had the form of a lightning bolt.

"It's not possible. It's not possible. It's not possible." She chanted to herself in panic.

She tried to open the door next, hoping to get out and escape from the strange situation she was in but it was closed, locked from the outside. Just like the Dursleys used to do to Harry in the books, before he came to Hogwarts.

Maybe someone was pulling a prank on her. Maybe one of the guys from the foster home. Possible, she supposed, but that didn't explain the scar on her forehead.

She looked at her hands in desperation and realized they were much smaller than she remembered them. She wasn't exactly tall, she was petite in fact but last time she checked her hands were bigger. And now that she was actually paying attention, her legs were too. She was a lot shorter than she had been yesterday.

Was it yesterday? How long had passed since she had been hit by lightning? Was she in a coma? Dreaming some really messed-up dream?

Was it just a coincidence that she had been reading Harry Potter the last day she had been awake before finding herself here, wishing she had magic, and then she woke up to apparently being in a cupboard and with a lightning bolt scar on her forehead?

"No, no, no. I didn't mean it so literally. I didn't want to be Harry Potter! Who would want to be Harry Potter? His life is a nightmare! I mean, sure he has magic, but that's the only good thing about his life." Then, a thought struck her and she smiled without realizing it. "Oh my god! Does it mean I have magic?"

She shook her head, feeling stupid. "Okay, let's try not to get carried away. I'm sure there's a logical explanation for what's going on. Right? I mean, I can't really be Harry Potter. It's absurd. Things like that just don't happen. Though, I suppose, being struck by lightning and survive – possibly – doesn't often happen either."

While she was trying to calm down, she heard footsteps over her head. Someone was on the stairs and quickly reaching the place just outside the cupboard she was locked in. With her heart beating in her chest like a hammer on iron, she waited. She didn't have to wait long because a second later someone was pounding on the door and shouting with a strident voice "Girl, get up! It's time for breakfast!"

The voice was unfamiliar and yet somehow, it was exactly like she had imagined Petunia Dursley to sound like.

And if it was really Petunia on the other side of that door, then she doubted the breakfast was for her.

She got up reluctantly when she heard the door unlocking and got out of the stiffening room. She looked around herself for a second, at the unfamiliar house, freakishly tidy and clean, all white with flowery wallpaper and marble tiles. Then she followed the woman – possibly aunt Petunia – to the kitchen.

"Hurry up girl and make breakfast!" The woman with a strangely long neck and pale blonde hair screamed at her.

"Yes, madam." Harry replied indifferently. She was used to these kind of people. She had met hundreds of them during the years. She knew that the best way to react was for her to do as she was told without protesting.

She started with the bacon and sausages, then the scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, buttered toast and finally the coffee. Fortunately she had practiced during the time she had lived in the foster families. A lot of them expected her to make breakfast, often lunch and clean around the house.

She took two pieces of buttered toast for herself and a cup of coffee. Petunia glared at her but didn't say anything to protest.

"This is your list of chores for today. Go wash yourself up and then start."

"Yes, madam." She said again. She watched a huge man with moustaches and blonde hair entered the kitchen, a very fat boy of about six or seven years old, following him.

'Vernon and Dudley, I presume.' She thought with a grimace. She left the kitchen a moment later without saying anything, ignoring the glares directed in her direction and got up the stairs. She found the bathroom after a few mistakes and closed herself inside. She immediately looked at her reflection in the mirror and like she thought, she not only looked smaller but also younger, by ten years more or less. There were some differences too from how she had looked before. Her eyes had been brown for instance, but now they were emerald green while her hair was a shade or two darker and curlier. Her face was slightly fuller but also prettier somehow, like all the wrong features in her face had been fixed somehow. Her nose, for example, had been slightly bigger and her lips less full, her teeth not so white and straight.

She looked more beautiful now, at six years old, than she did when she had been sixteen.

It was yet another thing that proved, without any doubt, that she was somewhere much different from where she had been before. And somehow, the three people downstairs, so much similar to the descriptions in Harry Potter, finally convinced her that yes, she was at number four Privet Drive, and, from the looks of it, she was Harry Potter too, though a female version of him.

She showered quickly, not losing anymore time and risking making the Dursleys mad and then she started her list of chores. She had to clean the house, mow the lawn, wash Vernon's car and a bunch of other things.

Many hours later, after a 'light' lunch, which consisted of ham and bread with one single glass of water, she cooked dinner, once again having something that consisted more of a snack than a real meal. Once she was again in the cupboard under the stairs, alone, she finally had the chance to think about everything that had happened and what she was supposed to do from that moment on.

If she really was in Harry Potter's place, that meant that she would receive her letter once she reached eleven and she would go to Hogwarts. While that sounded absolutely amazing, the other things that had happened to him were not and going to Hogwarts and joining the Wizarding World meant that she had Voldemort to worry about.

Fortunately, she had an advantage. She remembered everything that happened in the books and that meant that she could plan her moves very much in advance. She had no intention of following the script, so to say, and let so many people die. She could save a lot of people and get rid of Voldemort much sooner, avoiding all the pointless deaths and suffering that happened in the course of the seven books.

But first things first, she needed to know if she had magic now and, if she had, which seemed like a given – because otherwise why would she be there? – she needed to find a way to control it before going to Hogwarts.

After all Tom Riddle was able to do it, and yes, he was basically a magical genius, but the fact that she knew that magic existed meant that maybe she could learn to access it before going to Hogwarts. Using magic without a wand would be a huge advantage that she could keep hidden until she had the need for it. Someone trying to hurt her would think that taking her wand from her would render her harmless but if she learned to use magic even without a wand, she would be able to defend herself and take them by surprise.

The problem was that she had no idea how to access her magic. Maybe she could try to find some esoteric books that people who believed in magic tended to look in. Some wicca books or something. Maybe some meditation techniques and some spells that could help her access her magic. And maybe some fantasy books could help her too, give her some ideas on where to start.

Unfortunately she had no way to go to Diagon Alley, and anyway, it was too risky, people could recognize her and that would bring too much attention to her.

Being able to use magic would also mean being able to 'persuade' the Dursleys to give her an actual room instead of a cupboard in which to sleep and three meals a day. It would definitely improve her living situation a lot. She wasn't above using some intimidation techniques if it meant having a better life before going to Hogwarts.

She smiled to herself and closed her eyes, her mind full with plans and ideas for the days to come.


End file.
